Adrift in the Aisles
by burnedupasun
Summary: Daryl has always followed the road set out in front of him. But when Merle gets put in jail and there's no one to lead the way anymore, he finds himself adrift. He's got a job, and a place to live, but it's in a grocery store of all places, as he stands baffled by row after row of endless choices, that he meets someone who might just help him truly find his way.


**Honestly I don't know what this even is, haha. Fluff? The grocery store version of a coffee shop AU? All I know is that I had this idea while grocery shopping last week, and thanks to plenty of encouragement from Abelina, I managed to actually turn it into a one-shot. It's kind of random, and I'm not even sure how good it is, but it's the first thing I've managed to write in a month+ and for that reason alone, I love it. I hope you all like it, too.**

* * *

The last time he could remember being in a grocery store like this- a _real_ grocery store, all endless aisles and shiny floors and bright florescent lights, not just some convenience store or a little Ma and Pop grocery on the side of some dusty old road- he'd been a kid. Young enough to still cling a bit to his Ma's skirts, old enough to notice when a pair of women gave her sideways glances for spending more time in the liquor aisle than in front of the milk case.

He'd also been old enough for his Pa to decide he was too much a 'little man' to go to the grocery store with his Ma anymore. There had been some loud, drunken declaration about it being a 'woman's place' and how she could damn well do it herself and stop babying his son and turnin' him into a 'pansy', and that had been that. He hadn't had a need to stop into a grocery store since.

When he was younger his Ma had taken care of that; making the trips on her own every Monday, coming back with paper bags full of store-brands and slightly stale baked goods and sale items. Once she'd been gone, the Dixons didn't do much cookin' at all. They ordered in, or ate what they hunted, and filled in the rest with junk picked up at convenience stores and the like. It had been pretty much the same when it was just him and Merle on the road together. Packs of chips snatched up with cigarettes, cartons of greasy chinese food either delivered to or picked up by him, because Merle was liable to say somethin' offensive to whoever handed the food over. If it wasn't that, it was drive thru french fries and limp burgers, a slice of pie from some old diner where the leather booths creaked more than his old joints, stale bar peanuts and of course, beer. Cases of it, cans of it, bottles of it; there had always been beer.

Hell, he'd undoubtedly gone into far more liquor stores than he had grocery stores, up until now, anyway. Up until Merle had gotten himself locked up for what looked to be at least two years- _if_ he kept to good behavior, and there was never a guarantee of that when it came to Merle. Two year, maybe three or four or even five, which in the end meant Daryl was left on his own for what had to be close to the first time in his life. Daryl had spent his whole life following the one straight road laid out by first his Pa and then his brother, and now he was on his own, stranded, with no more straight and steady road in front of him to follow. He could have gone off on his own, of course, made his own new path without Merle to lead the way. He knew in his gut that if it had been the other way around, if he'd been the one in jail, Merle would've done just that.

But it wasn't the other way around. He was the 'sweet' baby brother, the one who stuck by the only family he had; even when that family was an old jackass with a drug addiction, anger issues, and 2-5 years for being caught with schedule 1 drugs. He was the brother who decided to stay, who found a cheap studio apartment and a part time job about ten minutes from where Merle was serving his time, so he could visit his brother on weekends, if Merle hadn't gotten his visiting hours taken away anyway.

He was the sweet, _idiotic_ baby brother currently standing in the middle of a pristine grocery store for what had to be the first time in something like 30 years, with absolutely no fucking idea of where a single thing was, but a pretty good inkling that he stuck out like one big, fat sore thumb. A giant, leather-clad, greasy-haired, ripped-jean-wearing sore thumb standing on a shiny floor in a brightly lit aisle filled with perfectly arranged colorful boxes, while women in neat sundresses pushed their kids past him and men in far pressed khaki pants milled around on their cell phones, asking whoever was on the other end what brand of cereal they wanted.

Fuck, he almost wished he had someone to call to tell him what to get. Maybe then he wouldn't be standing there with an empty basket, looking at aisle after aisle of food with no fucking idea why there needed to be a hundred brands of everything, and why one cost more than the other, or when the hell produce got so fucking expensive.

Right now, all he wanted was a goddamn box of cereal so he could have a bowl for breakfast in the morning. It shouldn't have been so damn hard, but then again, he hadn't planned on having to choose from an _entire aisle_ of boxes. Looking up and down the length of it, Daryl growled low in the back of his throat, ready to just snatch one of them up without caring, when suddenly he heard a voice come from behind him.

"It's ridiculous, isn't it? I mean, who sat down and thought: you know what people need? Over a hundred different cereals to choose from!"

Blinking, Daryl turned slowly to glance over his shoulder. When he spotted her, he went still. She was a tiny thing in a yellow sundress, her shapely legs stretching out from beneath the hem and her blonde hair long and loose down her back. He would have guessed she was in high school or something, except she had a cart of her own and a purse over her shoulder that made him reconsider somewhat. That, and there was something about her eyes. Sure they were big and blue and almost naive looking at first glance… but fuck if there wasn't something else, deeper within them. The kind of depth that made him think she wasn't quite as young or naive as she looked.

In fact he got so caught up in her eyes that it took him a moment to realize she was speaking again. "They're really simple, but I'm a big fan of Cheerios. I just like how they taste. Of course, they even have like five flavors of those, or something, which is kinda ridiculous, but I'd go for the original. Those never disappoint. They're in a yellow box, you can't miss it."

Then she flashed him a smile, and started to push her cart forward down the aisle, glancing back over her shoulder to add, "If you get too daunted in the rest of the store, just grab the brightest colored box!" She giggled. "That was my method when I went shopping for the first time. Pretty interesting results…"

And then she was gone, turning around the end of the aisle and into the next without him having said a single word.

The odd thing was, he didn't even feel annoyed, really. Not bugged by her mention of him being daunted, or her assumption that he'd been confused by it all. He was more just baffled. By her, and how friendly she'd been to someone most girls like her wouldn't look twice at… and her eyes. There'd just been something about her eyes.

But he only stared after her a moment and then, with a grunt at himself for getting carried away, he reached out and snatched the yellow box of cereal- _Cheerio's_ \- off the shelf and dropped it into his basket. Hell, it was better than getting nothing at all, right? At least he'd have something to eat.

* * *

A week later, he was standing in front of the row of shiny, almost unnatural looking produce trying to decide why the hell there were so many different damn varieties of apples and what the hell he was supposed to do with them even if he managed to pick a variety, when he happened to glance to his right, and there she was. The grocery store girl, as he'd thought of her in his head. Today her long blonde hair had been pulled into a ponytail, though even from where he was standing several varieties of apples over, Daryl could see a thin braid pulled in with the other smooth strands. She wore jean shorts this time, with a yellow tank top, underneath which he could see a hint of the hem of white.

Caught up in his surprise, he stared at her long enough that she must have felt the weight of his gaze on her, because after a few seconds she looked up. Of course Daryl darted his gaze away, instantly. There was no way she'd recognize him, after all. He'd just been some random guy she'd spoken too for less than a minute a week ago in a busy grocery store. Just because he recognized her didn't mean anything…

But as he stood there, staring blankly down at apples and doing his best to dismiss her in his thoughts, she must have taken the opportunity to sidle closer to him. He hadn't seen her move, but there she was just a few inches away, lending a hint of something sweet- honeysuckle, or maybe jasmine- to the air. She tilted her head to look up at him, and he could see her smile from the corner of his eyes as she asked, "So… how did you like those Cheerios?"

For a moment he kept his gaze just on the waxy shine of the apples, as if some part of him was oddly convinced that if he looked at her at all, let alone for too long, she might disappear. Which was probably ridiculous; she was just a girl, after all. She wasn't some ghost, or some mythological creature. Then again, he wasn't the kinda guy that most women would come up to and talk to in a grocery store once, let alone twice. Maybe it wasn't so shocking to think she might disappear if he tried to talk to her.

But after a second or two, Daryl gave a little shrug of his shoulder and replied gruffly, "Weren't bad." Truth was he'd liked them, at least as much as anyone could expect to like a cereal. He was even planning on buying another box today… that was, if he could figure out the produce section and move on to the cereal aisle.

"That's good," the girl- young woman?-0 replied, in a voice that was rather bright in comparison to his own gruff reply. "I mean, they're filled with all kinds of vitamins and nutrients and all, you know… great for a growing man."

Surprised into breaking his determined focus on the apples in front of him he shot her a look at that, and was amused to see a little playful smile on her lips as she glanced up at him with her tongue poking from the corner of her mouth. Teasing him, then. Funny thing was, he didn't much mind.

"So," she went on after a moment, turning her own gaze back to the vast array of shiny produce in front of them. "This is a ridiculous amount of apples, isn't it? I swear it's impossible to tell some of them apart. I'm a fan of macintoshes, though, always have been." She reached out for some, curling her fingers around it and tossing it lightly into the air before dropping it into one of the little plastic bags she had in her hand.

 _Oh_. That was what he was supposed to put them in, instead of just tossing them into his basket? No sooner had the thought flashed through his mind than the blonde reached out a hand to offer him a bag, the gesture as casual as her voice as she went on, "This store is pretty good about stocking local produce. Which is kinda why I like the macintoshes so well. My Dad knows the couple who run the farm these come from. I mean, I still swear they taste better when you pluck them right off the tree, but the ones they have here aren't bad!"

She seemed content to babble away without any interjection from him, and even more unusually, he realized he was okay with that. If she'd been anyone else he'd have grunted and glared and walked away, but this girl- this _woman_ \- her he just let chatter away, filling the silence with her melodious voice. He almost felt like he would have been content just letting her talk. Like he could've made his way through the whole store with her just babbling away. Still, he felt like he should respond in some way. So after a moment, he took the offered bag, shaking it open before reaching out to pick up two macintosh apples at once and drop them into his bag.

From the corner of his eyes he saw her smile as she twisted her own bag shut, and a moment later she slipped past him, heading to the next aisle with a little pause to call back brightly and warmly, "Hope you enjoy your apples!"

* * *

He did. Enjoy the apples, that was. The first one he had went nice with his Cheerios for breakfast, and the second he grabbed on the way out one day and had it as a snack at work. In fact they were so good that he'd stopped by the store on his way home on Monday to pick up more. Though he felt dumb admitting it, the whole time he'd been looking for a glimpse of that blonde hair and those blue eyes, and he'd been oddly disappointed not to have run into the grocery girl on his short trip.

Of course, his attempts at rationalizing that disappointment only helped him out, in the end, as he'd ruminated over why he hadn't seen her. Of course she hadn't been there on some random trip he'd made after work on a Monday. Both the previous times he'd seen her had been around the same time; Thursday, right after work ended. Maybe that was her grocery time. People had things like that, right? Certain days and times they always went shopping? He figured it made sense, to do it that way.

And so, why shouldn't Thursday be _his_ official grocery shopping day?

It was just convenient after all. He worked a four day week, which meant Thursday was the day before his three day weekend; he could head by on the way home, when the store wasn't nearly as busy as he supposed it was on a Monday, or a Friday.

And if it happened to also be the time he was most likely to run into the blonde woman, well… that was just a coincidence, right?

Well, if it was a 'coincidence', then it ended up being one that happened again and again, and each time it became harder and harder for him to pretend he didn't look forward to it. Every Thursday when he went shopping after work, his grocery girl who find him at some point in the store, and each time she was the one who spoke first, making a light joke or recommending a brand or whatever to him. She helped him figure out what kind of milk he liked (and suggested which dairy was the best), she guided him through the confusing sea of coffee brands, she showed him how to pick out fresh fruit and convinced him to try mangos for the first time.

Each time he looked forward to seeing her a little bit more and yet, their 'run-ins' remained just that: brief weekly moments in which they still remained anonymous, despite the fact that she knew how much he liked coffee now, and what his taste was in fruit, and he knew that she liked tea (because she almost always had a box of tea in her cart) and that she was a fan of the color yellow (because she wore it so often).

Nothing changed until one day, after what must have been almost two months of their little weekly meetings, they ended up running into one another by the deli. He wasn't really the type to buy meat at a grocery store, but he hadn't had a chance to go hunting recently, and so he'd figured he'd take his chances. Only he was left staring down at the endless packages of different cuts of meat with a furrow to his brow, thinking he probably should do more than just buy something to grill or smoke, like he normally would have. Problem was, he didn't know what else to do with meat then cook it like he always had.

There she'd come just in time, leaning around him with a smile to pick up a package of cubed beef as she remarked, "You know, I was going to make a nice stew this weekend." When he raised a questioning eyebrow, she went on, "It's actually pretty easy, especially if you have a crockpot. Beef, carrots, potatoes, some seasonings... Plus, you can make a good amount and just refrigerate it, and then you pretty much have dinner for a week. I could give you my recipe, if you want…"

Daryl knew, rationally, that he probably wasn't qualified for that. He didn't think he even knew how to follow a recipe at all, not to mention he definitely didn't have a crock pot. But she was looking up at him with those big blue eyes, a sweet smile on her lips, and frankly, none of that mattered. "Alright," he grunted out, with a lift and fall of his muscular shoulder beneath his leather jacket.

A second later she was turning that smile down as she rummaged through her purse and came up with a little notebook and a pen. "We'll stick to the simple version for now," she remarked as she scribbled down a short list of ingredients. "And really, you don't need much instruction. The best part about crock pots is you pretty much just… toss all of this in and let it cook!"

But then she glanced up at him, her pen hesitating as she studied him for just a moment. A shy sort of smile crossed her lips, and there was something about it that had him instinctively leaning in before he caught himself; as if he couldn't help wanting to be closer to her, or perhaps wanting to just reach out and brush his fingers over her cheek…

Silly, he was sure. But not as silly as the way he felt a second later when she breathed out, "But just in case, if you have trouble, you could always give me a call…"

Their relationship- if it even was what anyone would define as a 'relationship'- had been so relatively impersonal up until this point that the offer of calling her caught him completely off guard. He felt disoriented and off guard. Yet at the same time he couldn't help but feel a tug deep inside, as some voice within him whispered _yes_ without hesitation at the idea of holding her number in his hand.

The moment passed in a bit of a blur, and before he knew it he was looking down at the folded piece of paper in his hand. "Even if you don't need to call," she remarked, turning her cart around to face the next aisle, "You could always text me to let me know how it turned out. Good luck!"

On the paper beneath the list of ingredients and the brief recipe, all in her neat looping handwriting, she'd written out: 770-555-2384. _Beth_.

Without thinking he looked up, gaze settling on her back just a few feet away as he gruffly called out, "Daryl." And when she turned to look over her shoulder with a hint of confusion, he shuffled his feet and clarified, "My name's Daryl."

The smile that curved across her lips that time was far from shy; in fact it was so bright that it was almost radiant, and he was surprised to find that it took his breath away, leaving him unable to do anything but stare as she called back before disappearing down the nearest aisle, "Good luck, _Daryl_."

* * *

The unexpected glow of having her phone number folded into his pocket had lasted until he'd gotten home from the grocery store. Alone, in his tiny apartment- he was staying over the garage of a home that belonged to a nice, if nosy, older woman- he convinced himself she hadn't really _meant_ for him to call her. She was just being nice, right? Girls like Beth didn't give their numbers to men like him… never mind that she _had_ given him her number, without him even coming close to asking for it. Never mind that for some reason her name was on a loop in his mind, right along with the shine of her blonde hair and the warm depth of her blue eyes, and the sound of her voice.

He wasn't going to call her. She didn't really want him to.

He kept telling himself that all night and into the next morning, but of course his attempts for denial hadn't accounted for all the ways his first real try at cooking might go wrong. And go wrong they did, from the moment he'd carted over the old crockpot he'd borrowed from his landlady and nearly dropped it climbing the stairs to his apartment. After that he'd realized that none of the plugs in his kitchen were in actual convenient locations like, for example, by his actual counters. He'd ended up having to put it on his little kitchen table, dragged closer to an outlet where it could be plugged in and turned on.

Annoying as all of that had been, it had still been a downward spiral from there. He didn't have a potato peeler, and his attempts to use a knife to peel them didn't work well at all, and when he'd tried to flour the chunks of beef he'd made a mess all over his shirt, and then when he'd tried to cut the onion he'd forgotten to peel off the skin first, which had been a whole other mess…

… and before he even fully realized what he was doing, Daryl was reaching for his phone, growling as he punched in the numbers he'd memorized without even actively trying, lifting the phone to his ear, and waiting only for her brightly-voiced 'hello' before grunting out, "I finally got th' damn crock thing plugged in, but then it turned out I ain't got no damn peeler an' you can't peel potato skins with a knife, an' the flour for the beef went everywhere, an' how was I supposed t' know y' need t' peel the onion first? You didn't put none of that on th' instructions!"

His torrent of words- likely more than he'd ever said to her, frankly- cut off for a moment, before his eyes widened and with a scuff of his foot against the floor, he added in a gruff, embarrassed voice, "Oh, uh… this is Daryl. From the grocery store?"

There was silence on the end for what couldn't have been more than a second or two, but which nonetheless felt like an eternity to him, until it was broken at last by a soft, warm laugh on the other end of the line. "Well I figured it was you. I mean, unless my brother-in-law Glenn finally decided to try cooking instead of ordering out for once. Which is unlikely, given his love of pizza, so yeah. Gosh, that sounds like a lot of trouble you're having…"

He didn't know what he'd expected her to say after that, although granted he hadn't consciously planned on calling her at all. But he figured now that she'd somehow find a way to fix it, and tell him what to do. What he didn't expect was her to break the silence on the line by asking in a perfectly casual and almost sweet voice, "Alright, so, where do you live?"

* * *

Ten minutes later, and there was a knock on his door. On the phone when he'd stammered out where he lived, she'd chirped back in delight that she was only two streets over. All this time and she'd been so close; his 'grocery store girl' had literally been closer than the _actual_ grocery store was to his place. If he hadn't been so unexpectedly nervous, he might have laughed. Instead all he could do was clear his throat, make a failed attempt at brushing some flour off his pants, and pull open the door.

She was standing there with her hair in a loose ponytail, wearing a fitted yellow tank top, and a pair of worn jeans and brown boots that he'd seen her wear more than once before, though she didn't have a cart of food in front of her this time. She did have a tote bag in her hand though, and a smile on her lips as she rocked on her toes and looked up at him with a bright, "Hello!"

It was mildly jarring, seeing her standing there; seeing her _not_ in the grocery store. Yet at the same time, it kind of wasn't weird, either. She looked good- hell she always did, even though he tried not to think about it- but standing at the top of his stairs just in his doorway, she also just… seemed to fit, somehow. Like it was perfectly natural for her to be there, popping over to help him cook.

Of course 'perfectly natural' didn't account for how he felt inside, the way his stomach was kinda twisting; not churning, but, well… _fluttering_. It was the kinda feeling he made a note to never mention to Merle, who would have ribbed him endlessly for it and likely called him far worse than just a 'pansy'.

Pushing aside thoughts of both Merle and of the odd sensations within him, he stepped aside to invite her into his small apartment. It wasn't much, and what was there was pretty basic. The living room and the kitchen and dining area were really all one big, open space, with only the door leading to the outside steps, and another leading to his small bedroom.

Beth didn't hesitate though, slipping past him to look around with avid interest before aiming herself towards the kitchen area. "This is a nice space!" She exclaimed, her voice warm and genuine, making him wonder for a moment if she was seeing something that he didn't. Something beyond just a small apartment with white walls and barely any decorations; not even any curtains on the windows. "It must be nice not having neighbors, too. I share an apartment with my friend Tara, and she's great, but the walls in our building are so thin and all our neighbors are so _loud_ , sometimes."

She moved easily through the space, with a grace that reminded him somehow of moments spent in the forest; the quiet spiraling fall of a leaf, or the elegant leap of a doe over a small stream. She was so bright and colorful, too. The rest of the apartment seemed almost gray and boring with her in it, as if she were like that ray of sunshine that sliced through the tear in his window shade every morning, a bright streak of light in the darkness.

He was drawn to follow mutely in her wake, unable to resist, coming up slowly behind her as she reached the kitchen and flashed him a smile over her shoulder. "People in my building don't talk very much. I _wanted_ to get to know everyone when we first moved in. Even brought around some muffins I'd baked, but everyone was so private, you know? So Tara and I kinda refer to them as nicknames, now. It's probably awful, I don't know."

How had he not noticed just how melodic her voice was before? Of course he'd always found in nice, but it had seemed different before, in the vast open space of the grocery store, always muffled by the nearby chatter of all the other customers. Here, in his small apartment, it seemed to fill the whole space to each dusty corner, brightening it the same as her presence seemed to.

For a moment it seemed almost _too_ bright, like the sun, rendering his mouth too dry to reply. But then he swallowed, and found himself rumbling out curiously, "Like what?"

"Oh…" She ducked her head with a giggle, and he was surprised by the instinctive tug in his gut at the sight of the hint of pink stealing across her cheeks as she set her tote bag on his kitchen counter. "Well, there's red car lady, which is pretty self explanatory. But then there's also Mr. Chuckles, who just _laughs_ , like all the time. At first you kinda just smile, but then it just goes on and on again and again all day and lord, does it get annoying. There's ummm, the Rumblers, as we call them. They live above us, I think it's just two guys but it's hard to tell because they have friends over a lot. They spend all day and night watching movies or playing video games, and they have what I can only assume is a massive surround system, because it makes the ceiling _and_ the walls rumble." She shook her head as she opened her bag, and as she reached inside she added casually, "Then there's the Mrs. Moan and Mr. Bang next to us, of course."

At that she glanced up at him, her whole face flushing red as another nervous giggle bubbled from her lips. "They, um, have a _very loose_ headboard, and she's, well, _really_ loud and… well, I guess you get it."

Course he did. In principle anyway, but also more visually than he probably should have when he was staring right at her and her flushed cheeks and warm blue eyes. Moaning and banging was definitely not something he should have been thinking about when she was standing there in his kitchen, so slender and shapely and sweet, a hint of her honeysuckle scent clinging to the air around him and a small smile curving up her pink lips…

He cleared his throat suddenly, breaking the silence with the rough noise and a scuff of his foot against the ground, as he slid his hands into the pocket of his pants and gave a nod before he remarked, "So…"

For a second Beth just blinked up at him, and he swore he could see a glimpse of _something_ in her eyes- something warm and inviting and tempting- and then she looked away, turning her attention to the bag in front of her as she brightly exclaimed, "So! I brought a peeler, for the potatoes, and some other things we might need, you know, just in case… so let's get started."

* * *

Unlike the mess he'd been making on his own, the whole process ended up being far easier with Beth there. She had neatly cleaned up the floury disarray and gotten everything in order in what seemed like seconds,, and then her focus turned to helping him cook. He would have been fine if she'd just swept in and taken over, but in the end he was glad that she hadn't. The best part of her being there- well, one of the best parts- had been the way she'd made it a team effort.

Beth took the time to show him how to do things and then let him take over as she watched. She showed him what to do, carefully and warmly, and then she _let_ him do it. It was odd for him, to be taught that way, though he didn't imagine it would have been odd for anyone else. Daryl had grown up in a family where 'learning' was done by force; you got thrown into something by force and you made it work, you figured it out by guesswork, flying by the seat of your pants. You made it thru, or you failed, and took your punishment.

There had never been anyone like Beth before, with her gentle hands and sweet smiles, and her warm compliments about the way he'd sliced the potatoes or tossed the flour-coated beef in the skillet. There were no peelers or knives tossed at his head, no raised words leveled at him, no angry slaps to his back or head when he did something wrong. Hell, Beth never even made him _feel_ like he was doing something wrong. She'd just slip in there with a smile, curling her hand around his to guide him to hold or cut something differently, her touch as warm and distracting as the meeting of their eyes each time.

And after a half hour or so of work, they ended up with a bubbling crock pot of stew ingredients, just beginning to fill the air with it's delicious scent.

"That's the worst part about using a crock pot," Beth remarked as she swept some potato peels into the garbage and came back to the counter, close enough that her hip brushed his side as she looked up at him. "You have to spend the six or whatever hours it cooks _smelling_ it, if you're home. Trust me, your stomach will be rumblin' with craving it, in an hour or two."

He sure was craving something, but he didn't think it was the beef stew they'd just made. Not when she was standing so close, filling his nose with the scent of her. Not when her face was upturned just right, so the light above them illuminated the delicate curve of her lips and the cornflower blue of her eyes. Not when she'd been innocently and casually touching him all afternoon, in a way that spoke to the distant part of him inside that had craved contact for so long; the part of him that had shriveled up and hidden in the darkness, unaware that someone like her would come and pierce those shadows like a ray of sunlight.

Her hand came up casually to brush down his arm, and he could only half hold back his little shudder of need, which went through him in a restrained tremble. Daryl could hear the hitch of her breath, could see the way her chest stilled for a moment and then began to rise and fall again, and the craving rose up even more intensely within him.

The craving and the need was for her, of course, but not in the way those words might normally have been meant. Not in the way Merle would have meant them, when he accented them with a leer or a slide of his tongue across his lips, or a not-so-subtle jerking of his hand over his crotch.

It wasn't like that. It was her. Her nearness, her voice, her touch, her laughter, her _presence_.

He craved _her_. He wanted her to stay; wanted her to stay right here with him, no longer just 'the grocery girl' but Beth; the young woman whose laughter rang like a song, whose voice filled every corner of his once-private space, and whose stories bubbled free in an endless ramble that never once irritated him or pulled a growl from his lips.

Wanting anything like that was so new a sensation to him that again he felt disoriented, felt like for a moment the world was spinning just a bit. He felt as unsure and confused as he had in the grocery store week after week, staring at endless aisles of perfectly arranged food; baffling, confusing, strangely unattainable to a man like him, as it had been ever since he was a kid.

But then he focused on her, and the little smile that tugged at her lips, and he found himself breaking the confusing silence the same way she had time after time, throwing out his own life-line to match all the ones she'd given him, "Since y' helped so much, s' only fair if y' share in it, when it's done."

Her eyes held his, her voice warm with amusement that reflected the little quirk of her lips as she nodded and replied knowingly, "The best part of cooking is earning the results, I think. But this is gonna take awhile to cook…"

"I know." He knew a lot of things now, because of her. Not everything, of course. The world was a dizzying place full of things he'd never experienced, never touched, never come near to for whatever reason. But he was starting to realize that trying new things wasn't so bad. That it was fun, even. She'd helped him see that; in the most normal and mundane of places, too. So with a hint of a smile of his own, Daryl went on with a shrug of his shoulder, "You could maybe stay, while it cooks. We could, uh…."

The word wouldn't quite come to his tongue, but Beth was right there with a smile, throwing him a tiny little life-line yet again, "Hang out?"

"Yeah." He chuckled, the laughter rumbling in his chest as he briefly considered the fact that he didn't think he'd ever 'hung out' with a woman in his life. Not like this. Not with someone like her. Then again, he was pretty sure there wasn't another woman like her. "We could hang out. If you want."

She was as casual in this as she had been in every other moment, but Daryl saw the way she looked at him, the hint of a blush to her cheeks and the even brighter smile that lit up her face as she replied, "Alright. Let's _hang out_."

There was just a few seconds of them standing there like that, holding each other's gaze. His hand was resting on the counter and hers slid close, just enough so their fingers brushed as they looked into each other's eyes and lingered…

And then she grinned, and laughed, and as her laughter filled up the room yet again her voice followed, ideas bubbling free and bright and rambling as always, "We could watch a movie! Do you have any good movies? I'll watch just about anything, I think it comes from having a family with such different interests. Shawn likes action movies, Mama likes romances, Maggie is a fan of comedy…"

She made her way towards the couch and the television, that same bright spot in the dim of his apartment, and with a private little smile, he just followed, thinking about how funny it was that he'd once thought that the most daring thing she could get him to try was a box of cereal.

For a moment the world seemed to spread out in front of him, wide open in a way it had never been in his life. A hundred roads spiraling out from where he stood, and on every one he could imagine a slender, blonde-haired woman, glancing over her shoulder with a warm, bright, inviting smile. He'd have taken any one of those roads, with her leading the way.

Then he blinked, and she was standing in front of his TV with that same smile on her lips, and without hesitating he moved to stand at her side. The world might have been opening itself up to him bit by bit, but right now the only place he wanted to be was here; his arm brushing hers, the sound of her voice filling his ears, and the scent of honeysuckle all around him.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading! This IS only a one-shot, I don't plan on writing anymore. Just imagine they dated and got together and ended up doing all their grocery shopping together, every week on Thursday after work.**

 **Comments, as always, are much appreciated. 3**


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